As for metric; has anyone else noticed that when the French invented it they deliberately made the essential units a little bigger than imperial equivalents? Meter = yard+10%; kilo = two pounds +10%; tonne = ton+1.6% or US ton+10%. Isn't that a consequence of Imperial having a new and incompatible ...

It was very easy to just not read the letters to the editor. Or the front page. Or the newspaper at all, really, apart from the funnies. Now we get (fake) news bombarded at us left and right. What's different though? There are a lot of news sources around, but they're still pretty easy to ignore if...

Clearly a randomized double-blind trial of the value of driving practice/instruction is called for. The control group would have to have some kind of placebo practice/instruction. And because it's double -blind, the instructors themselves mustn't know whether they're providing genuine or placebo in...

Not a deal per se, but if you've put off buying Factorio, note that the price will go up to $30 in a few days. (Currently $20 on steam and gog) As you probably know we have a strict no sale policy. The game will not go on sale on Steam or any other platform. This basically means that purchasing befo...

One from The Hippopotamus (novel by Stephen Fry): there's a scene involving an emergency visit to a hospital in Norwich, which the narrator imagines caters mainly to local "bumpkins". I've seen a published and paperbacked German translation that manages to render this as "Kürbisse&quo...

Crossover Curious about whether I will have any effect tonight: My power is passive, the "unwilling voteblocker": Anyone night-targeting me will be unable to vote the next day (mod-announced at day start). Assuming nobody else removes people's voting ability, the ideal outcome ...

Well, crap. I just literally fell asleep while rereading. I'm going to have to go with unsubstantiated impressionism for this post between my nap and actual bedtime. Going by Sabrar's unofficial votals, the current top three vote accumulators are Red Ryu, Moody, and Gamma Emerald. I'm OK with any of...

- Plytho: Unspecific ping. I'll need to reread him isolated, but no time now. On reflection, I think my mild queasiness about Plytho stems from his ongoing discussion of Peaceful Whale. As for myself: I find Whale hard to read through all the stream of consciousness spamming, but in my opinion he i...

Long thread is long. I'll be over here, catching up. I wasn't aware that it (= having two scum factions) was such a common thing here, but seeing that multiple players from this site have stated the likelihood of there being two teams, I see it as reasonable for h_a to think so. I actually suspected...

Hi everyone, and a warm welcome to our smashing guests. Quick introduction before bedtime (I'm in UTC+2): I'm still relatively new to forum mafia games (4 complete games, all on the XKCD fora), very successful so far (4 wins: 2 town, 1 scum, 1 indie), and 50:50 at surviving the first couple of days....

8 Internets for whoever can make a decent "Twenty piece orchestra" - "score" pun. Emma, the violist, had warned us against hiring the new conductor. He has trouble reading music, she said. But the tryout rehearsal went so well! And since Emma was still off sick with tendonitis a...

I'm pretty sure Oktoberfest is newer than the Gregorian calendar. Far as I can tell from de.wikipedia, it used to be in October and at some point was moved because weather. Nobody could be bothered to change the name.

First thing that came to mind regarding the bottom text was the qntm.org guy. Second about the alt-text, reminded me about the change over from Julian to Gregorian affecting such things as George Washington's birthday. Also that this change-over didn't happen at the same time everywhere. Favourite ...

Something from over in the Forum Games > Mafia section I've been wondering about: Do we know how vanilla came to mean "baseline", "bog-standard", "nothing unusual"? I guess it has to be food-related somehow; but to me, vanilla is one of the more unusual spices one might...

Yes, thanks for playing everyone - and Boomfrog, I loved the theme here. A Soup character who absorbs the leftovers of all the disappeared foods? That was inspired. Edit (just because I can, now that the game's over): My first investigation target for Night 1 was Flicky, but I changed my mind a few ...

Fridge Quote from Sabrar, let's not give him a notification (sorry Bessie btw) @ bessie : any idea why Znirk would investigate me instead of someone he found scummy? Because confirming something I'm already confident of is not very useful when I could instead be testing and perhaps f...

Fridge that new reads list took a lot of time ... I just hope I'm wrong enough about who is scum to not be perceived as a threat and night killed right away. Hey, some of us have night actions to perform. I've changed my vote [for kill target] to znrick, he's on to us... :lol: Aww. And I...

What's the use of nights? Does it give scum time to plan? What is night/daychat? Is it A separate fora or something? Is their something I'm missing? One format for this kind of game is to have separate periods of time for "day" (which is what we're doing now) and "night" (when n...